Yes, I’m also not quite sure what the editors did for that book. On the plus side, it’s very easy to read. When a page is half white spaces, it really puts the “light” into “light novel”.
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The book is pretty expensive for the length though, especially if it’s so much whitespace.
In any case, I’m not sure about reading that kind of isekai anyway. I think it’d probably be more fun to consume something like that in anime form. For example, I recently watched 防振り and it was a ton of fun, but it didn’t seem like it would be fun to read.
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I guess it depends on the audience. For someone who reads fast enough like us, I also don’t think it’s worth it. I did get the first 10 volumes when they were heavily discounted, so that was fine though. For people at the lower intermediate level, reading at the book club pace, it’s reasonable, I think.
It does get better around volume 3, IIRC. I guess the discount is not random. 
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I don’t think the two us belong in the same group since it takes me about 10-15 times longer than you to read a book.
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Eh, I still think you are underestimating yourself, but even though, I read the book in a single day, so 15x isn’t that long anyway
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Oops, nobody answered your question yet, sorry!
The current pick will be finished on June 11th, so with the usual one-week break we will start to read our next pick on June 19th. We usually run the polls around 6 weeks prior to that to give people enough time to buy physical versions, so that means the next poll should be run in the first week of May, roundabout.
BTW I just watched the movie that was derived from コーヒーが冷めないうちに (it was aired as part of the Japanese Film Festival), and I loved it! Beautiful and moving. I do hope the book lives up to that, and I’m also looking forward to reading it 
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Thanks! It’s a lot of time, I’ll have to read something else in the meantime 
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Have you had a look at the tadoku thread? At the bottom of the second post, you can find a list of reviews and also suggestions on how to find interesting books.
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I’ll take a look at it and maybe at the other book clubs
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I just noticed yesterday that it’s available on Netflix Japan. I’m not sure I’ll watch it though. I very rarely watch movies these days.
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I have hurdles to jump first:
- Raise a bunch of money.
- Become a full time illustrator so I can work anywhere.
- Get reasonably fluent in Japanese
These are not necessarily hard and fast, depending on circumstances. For example, if I suddenly develop a huge following of Japan-fan artists, I could do a kick-starter. It feels far away, but I’m trying to stay open to it happening sooner.
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Oh yeah! I’m a few years away from my own dream as well. But steadily making progress towards it!
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I want to nominate a book but the list seems quite long already. Should I wait until a few books get removed or just go for it?
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I think it’s fine to nominate a new book.
Currently we have 16 nominations, that means there are 4 slots left (as the poll can only hold 20 entries). Also, a lot of the current nominations were unpopular in the last poll, so we might see a few of them drop out soon (which is totally expected given the long-lasting nature of this club). Therefore it is always nice to have some fresh contestants being thrown into the ring
I‘m curious to see what your nomination will be!
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Isn’t it 17 with Tenki no Ko?
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Oh, thanks! I totally forgot to add it to the nominations list. In that case, there is 3 slots left for new nominations.
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The suspense is killing me. What could this new nomination be!?
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I humbly present…
ガイコツ書店員本田さん (Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san)
Summary
Japanese
（業務と）戦うガイコツ書店員、本田さん!! コミック売り場がこんなに笑える職場だなんて聞いてない!? 爆笑必至の本屋さん実録お仕事マンガ☆ (from Amazon)
English
Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san is based on a real life experience of the author Honda during her days as a bookstore employee. The story follows the life of the staff while explaining how a bookstore works. (from Wikipedia)
Availability
Paperback: CDJapan Amazon
eBook: Kindle Bookwalker Kobo
Personal Opinion
This is a comedy/slice of life manga about working in a bookstore, specifically the comics department. You can tell that the author has worked in that job herself, because some of the foreign customers’ behaviours just seem incredibly spot on. Early chapters focus on customer interactions, but later on it gets more into some of the behind the scenes parts of the job, which I thought was really interesting. Oh, and of course the main character is a skeleton.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- Finished series with only 4 volumes in total
- Some foreign characters speaking Japanese at various levels of fluency - good for figuring out why certain expressions sound off to a native speaker
- Learning more book-related vocabulary
Cons
- Early chapters feature discussions of yaoi, though nothing explicit as far as I can tell, and there are no graphic depictions
- There doesn’t seem to be much plot
Pictures
Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?
- No effort at all
- Minimal effort
- Moderate effort
- Significant effort
- So much effort my head might explode
- I don’t know
0 voters
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Looking at the sample pages, I was of the impression it might be better suited for the Beginner Book Club? There is not too much text, easy sentences and furigana. What do you think?
My impression was that compared to recent BBC picks, it’s much more text dense. Haikyuu seems to be on a similar level, I didn’t read that one along with the club but from what I’ve gathered, many people seemed to struggle with it, so I thought this club was more appropriate. Also, my judgement might absolutely be clouded by the fact that I tried and failed to read this manga a year ago 
Of course I’d be happy to move it to the BBC if that’s a better fit 
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